Use local button styles during forwarded X11 session over SSH
This has apparently been discussed on SuperUser as well; Suppressingfire's answer looks to me like the correct one:
Install your favorite Ubuntu GTK theme on the remote host as well;
-
Create a
~/.gtkrc-2.0
on the remote host, and include the theme's own gtkrc from it; e.g., if you're running Ubuntu with the ClearLooks theme on the remote host, you can add use this line:include "/usr/share/themes/ClearlooksClassic/gtk-2.0/gtkrc";
Update from comments
The GUI way:
sudo apt install lxappearance gnome-themes-extras
lxappearance
With this method you also can change other properties like icons